


Balestra

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Michonne pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 19:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1953351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michonne’s wrist is in tierce, a traditional parry that can explode into attack, the muscles of her forearm stand corded as she holds the katana at throat level, legs slightly bent, eyes narrowed, the naked blade bare inches from his chin.</p><p>That’s not an apology, Michonne notes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balestra

BALESTRA: (in fencing) A footwork preparation consisting of a jump forward often followed by a lunge – a French term for a sudden leap.

 

{---                ---}

 

When Michonne was twenty-one she travelled through France for three months; she worked two jobs and studied full-time to pay for the holiday - fell asleep on subways travelling to and fro, her thesis rattling around in her skull, fingertips stained red with pen ink - it was a graduation present to herself and Mike came with.  He had a two-week vacation before he began his career as an architect in the U.S.

Mike returned early, leaving Michonne to drift alone in French cafés, the outside seats angled toward the street, row by row like a cinema.  She wore loose jeans, flowery shirts, ratty sandals with her toenails painted red; she visited the Musee d’Orsay on the Seine, its grand roof letting in a flood of light, illuminating the artists of old under a converted railway station, and learned to breathe, to let the pressure of university drop away under spotted sunshine.

Michonne learned how to be by herself in France.

She read Sebastian Faulks; walked wherever her feet led her, carried a camera but no journal; there was little Michonne would forget about her journey.  She toted her brother’s knapsack from one side of the country to the other, stood inside the salle d’armes in St. Gratien, its polished floorboards gleaming, and watched the students pair off on the traditional cork piste, their footwork formal as any dance: parry, lunge, and disengagement, repeated in sixte, in quarte, and in tierce, parry, riposte, and slash at the chest, disengagement and salute. Balestra and double appels: a foot-stomp as provocative as any Spanish dance.  The school specialised in the epee rather than the training foil and Michonne stood with her back to the mirrors, watched the students for hours in their rigid formality, their flowing lines; history come to life.

In Kendo there are four valid strikes to an enemy combatant - wrist, head, throat, belly - and in Michonne’s current existence the only strike worth a damn is  _men_ ; hidari-men or migi-men - left or right side of the temple - but the cleanest is a strike to the crown -  _men_  - direct to the brain and lights out for eternity. Michonne’s style isn’t specialised, she’s never been formerly trained; it’s a mish-mash of western and eastern fused together, it’s every Hollywood film Michonne’s seen and it’s driven by anger, desperation, the tensile strength of her body, the flexibility of her build.  Michonne has nicks on her shin from when she first started, over-extended her reach - brought the blade swishing down in a deadly arc - and whisked a layer of skin straight off her leg.  On occasion, Michonne’s had cause to wonder why she’s not in the same boat as Hershel, hopping about on crutches, but she learns quickly.  Mistakes are rarely, if never, repeated.

A strange thought to entertain as she works her way into the prison, stomping through the long grass and seeking Rick at the watch-tower, knowing his rifle will be tracking her every move.

The repetition of errors - returning here of all places - when she knows damn well what they contemplated.

Michonne’s hot, dehydrated, her head pounds viciously, courtesy of Merle’s pistol-whipping before selling her down the river, and Michonne doesn’t know how she feels yet; angry for sure; but understanding looms on the horizon - for the offer the Governor made, which Merle took care to impart – Michonne’s happy to nurse the betrayal for now.  Forgiveness will come later when her head is less sore, when she can look Rick in the eye and see if he’ll answer her true or flinch like a coward.  There are calluses between her thumb and forefinger, the katana both shorter and heavier than the epee, and when Michonne thinks of herself as a twenty-one year old in France, the image is removed, dusty, like staring at a painting by J.M.W Turner.

She can’t relate to that girl anymore - Michonne doesn’t want anyone to know who she was then – it’s better if the men think her fully formed, sprung from the apocalypse with a katana in hand, a ronin, defined only by the weapon she carries; there’s no history attached to the blade; Michonne stole it from her next door neighbour, a sixteen year old kid heavily into D&D.  It could be a replica from a film or a genuine antique - she has no way of telling, Michonne studied art/history at college, not the designs of yaki-ire - but she knows the sword has protected her well.  Her salle d’armes is the strip of ground between two prison fences; her opponent a shadow that leaps and bounds across the ground - tsuki to do (throat to abdomen) - kote to hidari men (wrist to skull) - the only strike that counts is the head kill; she doesn’t practice often, but it’s safer than going inside in her current disposition.

The sky changes from late afternoon to a slinky night, it veils his slow approach, patterns Rick in prisms of light and shadow. “Did you see him?” he asks eventually.

Michonne’s wrist is in tierce, a traditional parry that can explode into attack, the muscles of her forearm stand corded as she holds the katana at throat level, legs slightly bent, eyes narrowed, the naked blade bare inches from his chin.

That’s not an apology, Michonne notes.

Rick’s currently missing two men and Michonne returned hours ago, he sounds haggard to her ears; Rick’s clothing is dark, his face pale like a disembodied ghost; it has to be eating him, the circumstances of her return, why neither brother is here when she is.  It’s on the tip of her tongue to say ‘which one?’ to draw out his own unease but Michonne’s not that petty, and of the two men missing, only one has Rick’s undivided concern.

“Daryl ran across me on my return trip,” she ventures, finally.

“You were alone?”  Rick’s boots scuff against the gravel, his hand rests casually on the butt of his weapon, careless-like, and fooling no one.

Her lips part in a humourless smile.  “I didn’t kill Merle, if that’s what you’re asking.”  Michonne lowers the blade, hip cocked out, entirely focused on him.  “Merle let me go…then continued on.”

“To meet the Governor?”  Rick’s face goes pinched, unhappy.

“Ah-huh,” Michonne confirms.  Her next sentence is a slow feint, designed to provoke a reaction, aware of Rick’s complicity and making sure he knows it.  “To take your place at the exchange site, I expect.”

Rick looks blindly out into the dark.

He must be wondering why Daryl hasn’t returned, if Merle managed to get them both killed - if the treachery Rick planned for Michonne wasn’t visited on his own kind, twice-fold by the Governor - and Michonne thinks  _I hope you felt_   _that paper-cut slice_  because she’s entitled to the anger, she wants it to burn out clean.

“Daryl chased after him,” she explains. “That’s the last I saw of either one.”

Rick exhales, short and sharp, his fingers curl around the chain-link fence.  “Why did you come back?”

“Maybe I came to kill you.”  Maybe there’s nowhere else to go; the enemy of her enemy is her friend or some crap.  Perhaps Michonne understands risk assessment and as bitter a pill as it is to swallow - how little regard they held for her - the truth is, they didn’t go through with it.  Rick glances at her, inscrutable; the sword hangs low to the ground, brushing against the tips of weeds, his lack of reaction compels Michonne to remind:  “I went back to Woodbury to kill the Governor when _he_  crossed me, what makes you exempt?”

“You hate him more,” Rick says, flatly.

“True,” she concedes.  “I really do.”  Michonne examines his features, the stark lines of exhaustion; the pallor of his skin. Rick doesn’t look as ill as when they first met, he seems steadier, his eyes no longer drift toward the shadows, he doesn’t look over people’s shoulders, staring at a spectre only he can see.

Michonne could let Rick off the hook; tell him the Governor tried to kill her because he was a psychotic _control freak_  and any puppet he couldn’t manipulate was cut off at the strings, no allowances made - in Michonne’s personal tally that’s nowhere near the same as what Rick did - whose actions were guided by concern  _for_  others if nothing else.

She could reveal Merle knew Rick would change his mind - that he’d never go through with the exchange - but if Michonne’s going to speak of Merle to anyone then it will be to Daryl, not Rick Grimes.

She could speak of Andrea, the months they spent utterly alone, when Rick had a whole group protecting him, but her relationship with the other woman is sacrosanct.  He wouldn’t understand. Rick could allude to the circumstances but he hadn’t  _lived_ it, and there are certain things that should be held close, guarded by dragons and craggy cliffs, by impenetrable mountain ranges.  Her relationship with Andrea is not to be shared; it’s not to be dissected by men with their clauses, their cheapened ideals of what feminine friendship comprises of - sex or cat-fights - because only men were capable of the genuine article.  She heard the insinuation in Merle’s voice when he found them, saw the speculation in the Governor’s eyes - and took an eyeball right out of its socket in retaliation – Michonne’s seen enough of that leering bullshit to last her a lifetime, thank you.

She could say all of this to Rick, but she gives him nothing.

“Are you going out there?” she asks, motioning toward the dark.

“Ye-ah.” he drawls out.  “Yeah I have to.  See, it’s my fault.”

“Merle’s fault.”

“Daryl might not see it that way - I didn’t want his brother here; he knows that and I…I was the one who laid out the plan; who included Merle in the first place. I couldn’t confide in Maggie or Glenn.”  Because Michonne saved both their lives when she led Rick’s team into Woodbury.

Michonne likes to think Maggie would have spoken up for her if she’d known, when Daryl obviously hadn’t, she likes to think that’s why Rick hadn’t told either one in the first place.  “Funny, Merle said it was the Governor’s plan.  Not yours.”

“He’s my responsibility,” Rick says, adamant.

Michonne travelled extensively when she was young, by twenty-two she had been knocked back on eleven applications in the States before she landed her first job (because she was under-qualified; or over-qualified. Or Michonne didn’t have the right ‘look’, the right amount of experience. The art business was ruthless, they’d say consolingly, and shake her hand before they escorted her out of the premises) Michonne worked for other people for almost a decade before she had enough capital to run her own business, leaving behind the studies of classical art and moving into contemporary, her gallery built from the ground up and sourced with her own artists, the contacts she had discovered over the years.

Michonne married an architect, lived in the apartment of her dreams high in the city skyline; drank expensive wine to Mike’s chagrin, raised their child on her hip and since the turn, became subject to every cliché.  None of it matters, and as removed from each other as they are - financially, socially – that’s one thing she  _does_  have in common with Daryl. The past doesn’t matter one whit - dry bones and skeletons - best leave it buried in shallow ground.

Michonne is thirty-six years old.  She  _made_  it in that world - and she’ll make it in this one, too – clichés can screw themselves. In the chess-game of life, survival is king but Michonne’s a killer queen, her moves remain the game-changer on a chequered board.

She chooses to share her story with no one - not her two year old boy, or the manner of his death.  Not Mike and his best friend either - but occasionally, she’ll catch the way Carl looks at her, not with pre-installed prejudices, but with honest curiosity and something inside relents, bends towards him almost imperceptibly.  Carl is the first person she genuinely likes at the prison and as with the rest of them, he comes as a two-package deal.

Rick is the other half of that package, and Michonne finds herself curious, how he managed to keep a prepubescent child alive in this world; the friendships he forged, how this small, rag-tag, group of survivors cleared out an entire prison of walkers on their own.

He’s my responsibility, Rick had said. He could be talking about Daryl or the Governor, he could be talking about Merle and what happened this afternoon, or every single person in his company, either way, Michonne’s answer is the same.  “And that’s why I came back.”

Rick doesn’t make excuses for himself, he doesn’t try to pass the buck – that’s what leadership is - and it’s a rare enough commodity to find.  These people, she thinks, interwoven, hostile, fiercely loyal to one another, are worthwhile, worth fighting for, and Michonne hasn’t wanted to be a part of any other group for a long time (not since Mike).

But she wants this; Andrea taught her to want this again; people she could trust, who would fight until they fell because they didn’t know any other way.

Rick turns to face her, steadfast. “Will you look out for them? If I’m not back by daylight? They’re a good bunch of people - they had nothing to do with what went down today - and the prison’s ready as it’s ever going to be.  You can defend this place.”

“I could go with you,” Michonne offers. “I know the direction they went.”

Rick grimaces.  “Let Hershel check you over, see to that head wound first. I know where the meet was supposed to be.”   His gaze flickers at the reference but Rick maintains eye-contact, he doesn’t flinch away from her assessment.  “You and I - the deal I made – we’ll discuss that later, okay?”

Still no apology - but he’s not dodging the topic either - rather Rick’s thoughts are elsewhere, distracted by his missing men.  Michonne straightens from her slouch, sheathes the katana silently.  “Okay,” she agrees. “I’ll keep your people safe… Until you come back.”

The Dixons could be dead, probably are given the delay; going out at night is a fool’s errand but Michonne’s seen Rick go after Daryl before - he won’t play if games with his own people, they’re alive until they’re not - and she thinks the friendship between the two men is elusive, altering as it needs to, borne under a changeling moon.

Michonne doesn’t get in his way.

She watches thoughtfully as Rick heads towards the vehicles, listens to the quiet roar of the engine and opens the gates for him.  He drives out; a quick hand-wave as he passes by, then his tail-lights are snaking down the road.

She awoke in Woodbury with Andrea at her side - it was never their choice to go - and she watched the Governor as he side-stepped and parried, an artful dodger, his smile full of teeth.  Michonne didn’t have the same faith Andrea held, the same sense of  _hope_ , seeing their riches spill onto the street, wanting to be a part of the Woodbury community.  The opening in Michonne’s armour had been breached by one person only - Andrea - there wasn’t room for others and in their cleanliness, curfews, lack of weapons, with their Sunday barbeques Woodbury was too alien for Michonne to accept, too much of a stretch from her current existence.  She had forgotten herself for a long time - whereas Andrea never had.

Andrea still remembered who she was and where she’d been, she never buried her past, carried it with her, and felt the ache of civilisation when she saw Woodbury in all of its normality.  I’m tired, she had said, and while Michonne couldn’t forgive Andrea then she’s closer to understanding now, how tempting it must have been, to want to be a part of something when the only see-able alternative was a black void.  Why did you come back, Rick had asked, and there’s a dozen answers Michonne can supply.

But in the end, she thinks – maybe - she’s ready to trust.

Rick’s people aren’t clean, they bristle with weapons, they’re wary, suspicious: they look after their own first and foremost and Michonne recognises herself in them  - wants to curl in close - trusting people is a jump, one to two, two to three, it’s a balestra, a leap of faith, and Michonne’s ready, she’s already balanced on her toes.


End file.
